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The Forum > Article Comments > Seeking asylum is no game > Comments

Seeking asylum is no game : Comments

By Susan Metcalfe, published 12/10/2009

The Opposition’s dialogue on asylum seekers is archaic and makes no sense.

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Being poor does not mean you qualify as a refugee under the convention. If you want people migrating to Australia becasue they don't have 2 cents to their name then stand up for the poor. Not much informed opinion about refugees here. The dog whistles and up they rise. Even Philip Ruddock has arisen today to take up the cry in the media.
Posted by baxter, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 1:37:26 PM
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I'd suggest a few people should take a look at this website and refresh themselves on the definition of a refugee.

http://www.unhcr.org.au/basicdef.shtml#def01

The important point in my opinion is having a "fear of persecution".

Once those refugees have left their own country and are no longer in fear of persecution, they cease to be considered refugees.

Those soft hearted souls who would open our borders to all boat people describe the pained journey that some "refugees" take in order to reach Australian borders insinuating that adds to the seriousness of their plight.

I have a very simple answer. Stay in Indonesia or any of the other 8 countries they have travelled through where they are not under fear of persecution. They choose to make that journey based on the prosperity that Australia offers.

I hope that I am ever under real "fear of persecution" and need to flee my country. But if I do, I won't be getting out the travel brochure and trying to make it to Paris. I'll be "fleeing" to my nearest port of sanctuary (probably, shiver, NZ) not making risky, expensive boat trips across half the world.

I am not a big fan of Phillip Ruddock, but I do agree with one of his past comments. He said he understood people's sympathy towards boat people given the high standard of living that are we accustomed to in Australia.
But he described the health and welfare of those stepping off the boats as a far cry from the REAL refugees that he had visited in Africa who needed our help.
As has been mentioned here a few times, every half deserving boat person who arrives, takes a place from a more deserving refugee who is stuck in a camp somewhere else in the world, who would not have dreamed of having the money or the ability to reach Australia on their own.
Posted by burbs, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 1:58:34 PM
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The most desperate and vunerable of the world’s refugees are single women and children living in squalid refugee camps in Africa and Asia. They live in abject poverty and are forced to deal with hostile locals, an almost total lack of economic opportunities, frequent gender based violence, high rates of crime and food shortages. However, as a group they are not represented among the clients of people smugglers as they are obviously unable to pay the many thousands of dollars required.

The main group of asylum seekers using people smugglers to come from Afghanistan seem to be able bodied men with access to substantial financial resources. They are able to pay the $10,000 per person required to pay people smugglers, even though Afghanistan has a per capita income of about $800 per year or around $2 per day.

Refugee advocates frequently cite racism or xenophobia or anti-muslim sentiment as the reasons for so many Australians being strongly against queue jumping, but could it not be that it greatly offends the sense of fairness of very many Australians that able bodied men coming from countries where the per capita income is $2 - $3 per day can pay many thousands of dollars to people smugglers and thus take precedence in Australia’s refugee resettlement program over desperate and vulnerable women and children refugees.
Posted by franklin, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 2:25:21 PM
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Franklin has an excellent point re able-bodied men with money being the biggest group of boat people. Lets have a points system that favours Mothers and young children. However all refugees have to be accepting of our way of life.
Here is another idea. NO money passes to any lawyer under any circumstances of the refugee examination proceedure? Of course I appreciate the author and her colleagues are only doing this for the good of all humanity so they will not be worried surely?
Refugees have a visa for ten years but if they go back to their country of origin in this period then their visa is cancelled. So many people who are desperate to enter Australia go back "home" regularly when supposedly they were in fear of their lives?
Posted by JBowyer, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 4:47:29 PM
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*Being poor does not mean you qualify as a refugee under the convention*

Nobody claimed that it did, Baxter, so quit shooting down
your own strawman arguments.

The point is that people who have nothing and are living
in refugee camps, are highly likely to be refugees, which is
not the case for those sailing here for a properous life.

Our present asylum seeker policy is frankly a joke. So Kevi
rings Indonesia and they get rid of yet another boat from
Sri Lanka. So what are these people meant to think? That
Australia welcomes boat people, or it does not welcome
boat people? Should they risk their savings on a trip to
Australia?

Once again, lets have a fair and cost effective system.
Close down the boat trade once and for all, so that nobody
pays people smugglers. Create a queue that many are fretting
about, then take all 13'000 or whatever number of asylum
seekers that Australia agrees on, from refugee camps.

Its fair, its cost effective. Its far better then our
present confused system.
Posted by Yabby, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 9:16:37 PM
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The political left seems totally unable to grasp the groundswell of opposition to ALL immigration that is sweeping most western countries at present. The thing they cannot grasp is that it has little to to with race, and everything to do with overcrowding, swamping of government services and destruction of environment (as illustrated on the North Shore at present). Last year there were over 750,000 immigrants into Britain, mainly from eastern european members of the EU, and neither major party would say anything about it, due to pressure from the real estate and business pressure groups that benefit from immigration. The result was the election of two British National Party members to the European Parliament. If the left want to encourage the resurgence of the far right in politics, this is the way to go. When will the political elites realise that the main problem in the world, from which all others stem, is not nuclear proliferation, global warming or CO2, but POPULATION, we will be able to make some progress. The only heroes in this is the Chinese, who have succeeded in cutting their population increase by 250 million with their one-child policy. Nature has a fairly brutal way of dealing with any species that permits its population to exceed the sustainable limit, and it usually involves four horsemen. The world population will have gone from 3 billion in 1959 to 7 billion next year. All countries should immediately adopt the Chinese policy to minimise the imminent huge further increase. Those that refuse to comply should be denied all foreign aid or trade, and forced to choke on the increase. There is, of course, no hope of this happening, as the only thing that George Bush, the Pope, and the Ayatollah agree on is that nothing must be done to limit population.
Posted by plerdsus, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 8:04:40 AM
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